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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
July 27, 2013
What is the one thing that gets past us, despite our best defenses? As lethal as a sniper’s bullet. Any guesses?
Tell you what, it is flattery. Whether blatant or subtle, clever or camouflaged, flattery is insidious and makes cream puffs of our resolve. It so completely manages to wreck our personal value system that it contributes to all our errors of judgment, all the mistakes we make, all the times we get conned.
Even when we know that the flatterer is lying through his teeth or spreading the butter with marked obviousness, we fall prey to the blandishment. Sir, you are the greatest. Without you we’d be sheep in the wilderness. Madam, your ideas are brilliant. You write, sing, paint so well. Your home is beautiful. You are generous ,kind, wonderful, a natural golf player, great shot there on the seventh, man ,how do you play so well at your seniority, you are special. It does not end, the deluge of drivel getting you to become as malleable as plasticine.
Oh, we tell ourselves otherwise. Look at this idiot falling at my feet, trying to pull the edge of the rug, he thinks I’ll fall for his nonsense.
Yes, you will. In little or larger ways we all do crumbling like cake in front of that speeding bullet.
In the aftermath we make dangerous friends, mean enemies, wrong decisions, mistrust the trustworthy, trust the worthless, get parted from our wealth, our security and our peace of mind.
And all along we knew we were being taken to the cleaners, the words or the deeds were just so pleasing to our fragile little egos we couldn’t stop.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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